[103] : A Head-On Approach

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.....

Both Roger and Jean Grey have the ability to fly.

Although Jean Grey's flying speed is a bit slower and she still seems somewhat inexperienced, overall, she is not slow, faster than a regular car.

Thus, after a few dozen minutes, the two of them crossed a great distance and arrived at Clarice's parents' home.

Without disturbing the parents who had already sent away their child, Roger had Jean Grey influence their thoughts, making them unable to see him and Jean. He then instructed Jean to sift through their memories and asked:

"How is it? Any news?"

"..."

Jean remained silent, processing the memories from Clarice's parents' minds, before finally saying to Roger:

"They don't know where those soldiers came from. One day, the soldiers just showed up at their door, claiming they could cure Clarice, and then took her away."

"Hmm? Was she taken by force?"

"No... it was... they offered compensation…"

"..."

Roger fell silent.

They accepted compensation… and handed Clarice over to these mysterious soldiers?

Isn't that essentially selling their daughter?

Noticing Roger's displeased expression, Jean added:

"But they truly wanted to help their daughter. They thought... Clarice's ability was an illness."

It couldn't be said that Clarice's parents didn't love her; they just saw mutants as patients, and mutant abilities as a unique disease.

So when a group appeared, claiming they could cure Clarice's condition and even offered a subsidy for the treatment, how could her parents refuse?

Besides, judging from their home, Clarice's family didn't seem particularly well-off.

Roger's initial anger, thinking Clarice had been sold, subsided significantly.

He had no reason to blame Clarice's parents. They were simply misguided, narrow-minded parents who made a mistake out of love for their daughter.

Without doing anything further to Clarice's parents, Roger and Jean quietly left, just as they had arrived.

As they departed from Clarice's parents' home, Jean asked Roger:

"We don't have any other leads now. What do we do?"

"Can you still track down those soldiers we injured yesterday?"

After a moment of thought, Roger suddenly asked.

"You want to trace them back to the source?"

Jean understood Roger's idea and replied:

"If they haven't left the city yet… it should be possible."

"Alright, let's find those soldiers directly."

Roger flew with Jean toward the hotel where they stayed the previous night.

Roger hadn't considered using the soldiers to find Stryker before because he hadn't thought it through. He usually takes things step by step, without making elaborate plans, so he simply ignored the soldiers at the time. It wasn't until today that the idea came to him.

Now, those soldiers were probably taken away by Stryker, and there was no guarantee they could find them.

But they didn't necessarily need to locate them directly. By reading the memories of nearby residents, they could pinpoint when and by whom the soldiers were taken, and then follow that trail to find clues related to Stryker.

With Jean Grey's telepathic abilities, the process was tedious, but eventually, they found the last known location of the soldiers from the previous night.

Shortly after Roger and Jean left the scene yesterday, another group of soldiers arrived and took away the ones Roger and Jean had beaten up.

They loaded those soldiers into a military truck, which followed the main road out of the city before disappearing.

This was the extent of what Jean could glean from the last witness's memory.

"It looks like this is as far as we can trace."

Standing on the main road outside the city, Jean spoke to Roger.

Roger narrowed his eyes, scanning the road ahead as he began to hover in the air. He said to Jean:

"No worries, you've done great so far. Now leave the rest to me."

With that, Roger ascended into the sky, using his super vision to search the surrounding area for any possible clues.

Even though Stryker's men had left a long time ago, they couldn't have covered all traces within just a few hours.

Moreover, Stryker's base was unlikely to be within the city, so by scouting the surroundings for any military installations, he could roughly determine Stryker's location.

Sure enough, after a few minutes of aerial observation, Roger spotted a facility in the nearby woods that resembled a military base.

He called it "resembling" because it wasn't a typical military base.

Usually, Roger's x-ray vision could penetrate military bases to see inside, but this facility... managed to block his vision completely!

Despite being enhanced, Roger's x-ray vision still had its limits.

In the world of the Boys, Butcher could use a zinc-coated lockbox to shield his presence from Roger's vision, so it stood to reason that others could do the same.

Of course, this base wasn't specifically targeting Roger. Beyond the zinc layer that blocked Roger's sight, he could see layers of lead, aluminum, copper, and other elements.

Each layer was thin, with zinc being the fourth one, and it was likely that other layers followed beneath it.

This wasn't designed to counter Roger specifically but to guard against any mutants with x-ray vision.

A normal military base wouldn't go to such lengths to counter mutants, not because they couldn't, but because they wouldn't think of it or need to.

Only someone like Stryker, who constantly conducted research on mutants and considered them his enemies, would take such precautions when constructing a base.

After pinpointing the location of the facility, Roger regrouped with Jean and shared his deductions.

Without hesitation, the two of them flew straight toward the facility.

...

"What do we do now?"

Upon reaching the base's perimeter, Jean looked at the tightly shut gate and the soldiers on guard, and asked Roger.

Roger glanced at her and said, "We go in head-on… or maybe, from above?"

"Just… walk in like that?"

"What else? You could use your telepathy to make the soldiers ignore us, and then we could sneak in, find the captured mutants, 

"Then use those mutants as evidence to confront the base commander and report it all to Charles… it's perfect."

"..."

Jean looked at Roger in disbelief.

She hesitated for a moment before asking:

"Sorry, I don't mean to sound rude, but… could it be that… you don't actually know how to make plans?"

"How could you say that? My plan wasn't good?"

Although Roger was not a planner, he did have a certain kind of unfounded confidence.

Jean Grey had now begun to grasp some aspects of this "alternate-universe Superman's" personality. She sighed and said:

"…It's not that it's bad, it's just, I think it could be... more careful."

"But do we have any other options?"

Roger retorted.

This wasn't a coordinated mission with the X-Men; it was just Roger and Jean Grey on their own, without the resources for a meticulous plan.

Going in head-on was the simplest and most effective approach.

"But… I can't control that many minds."

Jean said quietly.

Her abilities weren't primarily focused on telepathy. She could influence the thoughts of a few people, making them overlook her presence, or read their short-term memories.

But she couldn't do what Charles could, control the minds of an entire base's worth of soldiers, allowing them to waltz in unchallenged.

Jean thought that after she expressed her concerns, Roger would adopt a more cautious approach.

Yet to her surprise, after hearing her out, Roger's face lit up with a look of realization as he said:

"Oh, I see. Well, that actually makes things simpler."

"What…? Wait, where are you going?"

Seeing Roger get up and start walking, Jean asked in shock.

Roger didn't reply. He headed straight for the base gate, ignoring the soldiers' warnings. He positioned himself for a sprint and then dashed toward the facility at full speed!

In just two seconds, Roger covered over a hundred meters and crashed directly into the base's gate!

Boom!!!

The steel gate, more than ten centimeters thick, was blown open by Roger's impact, flying like weightless wooden boards into the air before crashing back down.

In the distance, Jean Grey watched Roger's head-on assault in stunned silence. She never imagined he would do something like this!

"If it's so troublesome, then I'll just force my way in."

Roger, having barged into the base, glanced at the soldiers who surrounded him with raised guns and spoke the rest of his thought to Jean.

...

"Colonel, we have an intruder!"

Inside the base, the young Colonel Stryker was leisurely sipping coffee in his office.

But the sudden blaring of alarm sirens and the soldier who burst in unannounced disrupted Stryker's rare moment of peace.

However, Stryker didn't seem too angry. He quickly put down his coffee, followed the soldier to the surveillance room, and asked:

"What's going on? Who's attacking us?"

"It's… a mutant."

"A mutant?"

Stryker froze, then asked, "Is it Magneto?"

The only mutant Stryker could think of, who would dare to challenge the military, was Magneto Erik, the notorious fugitive. If it was him, Stryker wouldn't be surprised if he stormed a military base single-handedly.

But the soldier's expression was strange as he replied:

"No… it's not Magneto. It's an unfamiliar mutant, and he said…

"He calls himself Superman."

...

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